1. Field of the Invention
Heat pipes have been used to cool electronics for some time, yet heat pipes that use heat to evaporate a liquid into a gas are not contained within the same physical case such that the liquid that performs the cooling function is in direct contact with conducive surfaces of an electronic component or electronic assembly contained within said enclosure or case. Typically heat pipes are added to electronic devices after they have been manufactured into a component or electronic sub-assembly and are not designed into the components case from the very beginning.
Evaporative heat pipes are available for purchase as separate devices that can be added to electronic assemblies to cool them, yet these devices do not encase or enclose the electronic components that they cool. These types of heat pipes typically use materials are not well suited to enclosing electronic components with exposed conductive surfaces as they use materials that give up ions easily, as they use materials such as copper and water. If these materials were used to encase and cool electronics with exposed metallic interconnects the electronics would be contaminated by ions that would short and/or corrode metallic contacts contained within. Furthermore since in these designs the liquid is not in direct contact with the electronic components themselves, a fact that limits their performance as heat must first transfer through the components case before they reach heat pipes of this sort.
Other forms of liquid cooling are not small and self contained, as they rely on circulating a liquid with a pump, or condensing a liquid by compressing a gas.
Since electronic device densities are increasing rapidly and operating at ever higher frequencies a new method for cooling electronics that can be contained within a small package would enable higher power electronics to be packaged in highly portable electronic devices that operate in configurations of high heat density. Such high heat transfer capabilities are intended to enable electronic devices to operate within current component form factors while minimizing or eliminating the need for external heat transfer mechanisms that are usually required to cool electronic components that are typically attached to conventional high heat power electronic devices.
2. Description of Related Art
U.S. Pat. No. 4,833,567 by Saaski et al. describes a case designed to operate as a heat pipe that encloses the electronic component or assembly heat pipe case built around an electronic assembly that includes electronic components, and a printed circuit substrate. Saaski's invention uses a plurality of “flutes” that are distributed along the top inner portion of his heat pipe assembly. Unlike the invention described within this disclosure Saaski's flutes are very short and are fully contained within the body of his heat pipe case. Saaski's invention does not use or describe or show a plurality of towers that extend in a plurality of directions where each tower contains at least one chamber as is described in this disclosure. The use of such a plurality of towers that extend in a plurality of directions provides true 3 dimensional heat pipe function, Saaski's invention is not designed to operate optimally when inverted. Thus the invention described within this disclosure is an improvement over Saaski's invention.